. he spoke with speaker boehner and harry reid over the weekend and yet no meeting date is set. what kind of outreach is going on behind the scenes? are you aware, ken, of any other relationships that are being developed at this moment to try to fend off the fiscal cliff? >> yeah. mostly what we're hearing about is that the staff level there are ongoing negotiations between the white house, between harry reid and the senate majority leader's office and john boehner's office, the house republicans. but so far what we've seen, at least in the principal, is really just highlighting the differences and how stark the differences are. yes, there have been some republicans who have publicly said they are open to poe tengts tax increases, revenue increases, but even more so we're seeing this entrenchment over the military spending cuts, the unwilling nness to see that and we're seeing on the democratic side the idea that maybe it wouldn't be so bad if we went over the fiscal cliff and kicked the can down the road to the next congress which will be more favorable from the liberal perspective

welfare at the expense of none other than the middle class. for more, we go to joy reid, managing either of grio.com and jared bernstein. welcome to you both. >> nice to be here. >> earlier we asked you to come up with a figure, because you know i have -- like a dog with a bone on this. we asked you to come up with a figure how much corporate welfare per year is dolled out. what did you find out? >> from the tax policy center, nonpartisan, highly reliable group, $150 billion in tax expenditures that favor corporations in 2012. so, there's your number. >> now, if i'm not mistaken, the amount we actually spend on entitlements that we actually are entitled to because we pay into a system is about half of that? in terms of who's getting the better deal, corporate welfare seems like the better deal and if we're looking for cuts, maybe that's where we should start? >> i think the point is that in both of these cases it's absolutely nonsense, and i know you share this view, to write off all of the social programs as, you know, welfare that just layabouts are -- that 47%, clear nonsense. at the

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